Asleep Then, Despite Color

The elusiveness of grass, though we walk on it
every day, is its motive:
to crush the weed, to sponge water
from the air and sky, to say green
to the desert on the other side
of the whole country, where black
moods and orange flames persist in eradication.
Is this a failure of birds
to convey the seed heads properly
where they might flourish, chittering
about us behind our backs
as we wander our yards?
If we sleep, and most of us do, with disregard
for nature outside, we miss the bending in prayer
of these small gods of oxygen. We miss
the slow unfurling heavenly blue morning glory,
its fuchsia twin whispering
in the open mouth of daybreak.
Impossible, you argue, to see everything
grass does. Sometimes it does it miles away
at the edges or in the cracks of the city,
or under rotted boards of a chicken coop.
It does something, too, at the lip
of the sea, wearing a disguise, or suddenly,
spontaneously, disappearing on both sides of the Atlantic,
all at once. No one knew it would go,
knew why it gave up on us. Under a waterless sky,
it did its grass thing and died. We were asleep then.

Copyright © 2009 Carol Willette Bachofner All rights reserved
from Dogwood
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission